WASHINGTON — The Air Force is barring its personnel from using work computers to view the Web sites of The New York Times and more than 25 other news organizations and blogs that have posted secret cables obtained by WikiLeaks, Air Force officials said Tuesday.

How ridiculous. If you are an American: Your tax dollars foolishly at work. The Office of Management and Budget goaded the USAF and other US government agencies into doing this. How much was wasted on this pointless exercise?

I hate mindless IT rules that do not apply to a situation and just get in the way of getting work done. But IT people are chosen for their willingness to enforce rules which are irrelevant to a situation. So is the case with the USAF.

Computer network specialists within the Air Force Space Command last week followed longstanding procedures to keep classified information off unclassified computer systems.

Of course this web site blocking will just cut off useful sources of news of what is going on in the world. It is pointless. The Chinese and Russians and other world powers will read thru every detail of the leaked cables. Meanwhile the USAF enlisted personnel and civilians can just read at home what they can't read at work. The only usefulness of blocking these sites is that government employees will have fewer ways to distract themselves from work. But remaining distractions on other web sites are so huge in number that this exercise won't even improve productivity.

So now we know that there have been hundreds of thousands of "secret" cables available for download (untraceable download, that is) by tens of thousands of people, for quite a while. What are the odds that the Russian, Chinese, Pakistani, etc. security services didn't gain possession of this trove a number of years back?

Maybe they are as feckless in ferreting out secrets as the USG is in guarding them. But I doubt it.

Next thing from the USAF is to tell their employees not to have marital sex without a condom. Are they for real?? Are they seriously trying to block the sun with one finger??

That's exactly why Sweden is trying to protect Assange, -by accusing him of not wanting to have sex without a condom and thus getting hold of him-, thus preventing the U.S. to get its claws on him and accuse him of supposed "crimes" with which to give them a death sentence. (A little like the Inquisition)

The free exchange of information and open communication through the web is simply unavoidable now. The Internet is now -just one- greater reality than any country's system.

Governments simply have to change, and that's that, because peoples are begining to shake their mental dullness off.
Without THE PEOPLES, governments are nothing.